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Mike Argento: York County man was once the fastest engineer on U.S. rails

MIKE ARGENTO

Updated:
12/07/2012 11:53:39 AM EST

Recently, Reginald Franklin and his wife, Estelle, were going through some boxes from their move, a few years back, from Washington to the Autumnwood development in Conewago Township when Reginald came across an old VHS tape, labeled "Christmas."

He hooked up a VCR and popped the tape in, thinking he'd see footage of an old family Christmas. Instead, he saw footage of himself at the helm of what was, at that time, one of the fastest trains in the world, an engine that could have significantly changed rail travel.

It was exciting to Franklin. He had worked on the railroad since 1976 and was a train person for 30 years, retiring a few years back. He was an engineer, piloting trains for Conrail and Amtrak. He started out with Conrail driving freight trains and then moved over to Amtrak and passenger trains.

It was a good career. He got to meet vice president Joe Biden, when he represented Delaware in the Senate and commuted to Washington on Amtrak. He drove the train that, in 2001, carted the Baltimore Ravens to New York to play the Jets. He once drove the train that pulled Paul Newman's private rail car.

Biden was just what you see, he said. "Nice guy. For the working man," Franklin said. "He always told us if we have any problems to give him a call. He's a big supporter of Amtrak."

He didn't get to socialize with the Ravens or Newman. Newman was aboard the train, accompanied by some friends and his entourage of assistants and chefs and whatnot. The car was said to be pretty opulent. But Franklin didn't get to see it; he was at the front of the train, driving.

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It wasn't all good, though. Over the course of his career, he hit four people with the train, which isn't pretty. It happens more often than you think. In fact, he thinks he was pretty lucky. Other engineers hit a lot more people.

In one instance, a man in Rahway, N.J., jumped in front of his train while it was doing 125 mph. In others, people were walking along the tracks and didn't get out of the way. One was wearing headphones and didn't hear the train approaching, or Franklin laying on the horn to warn him. In yet another, a kid playing chicken with the speeding train was just a little too slow getting out of the way.

When it happens, Franklin said, he'd have to don latex gloves and a mask to exit the engine after coming to a stop. He served with the Marines in Vietnam in '66, and even that didn't prepare him for the blood on the tracks.

"You go down the stairs and they're all covered with blood and guts and veins," he said. "When you hit someone going that fast, they just don't bounce off to the side of the tracks. They explode. It's like hitting an egg with a baseball bat. There's nothing left."

He tries not to think about it. Instead, he thinks about the time he was the fastest man on tracks in the United States, a time that the videotape brought back.

It was about 20 years ago. Amtrak was experimenting with high-speed rail and had brought over an engine from Sweden called the X-2000. It was a sleek engine, packed with all variety of high-tech gizmos. It cost Amtrak $10,000 a day to lease it from the Swedes, not including the team of engineers necessary to make it run on American tracks.

Amtrak selected 10 engineers -- based on performance and record -- to drive the train. Franklin was one of them.

He and the other engineers trained on a simulator that the Swedes provided. The film used in the device was produced by Disney.

Then, it came time to test the train. It was hauled to New Jersey; the tracks between Trenton and New Brunswick provided a fairly straight shot and would give engineers the best chance of pushing the train to its upper speed limit. For the tests, the so-called "over-speed" system -- a kind of governor that limits the train's speed -- was shut off.

Franklin took the helm for one of the early tests. The train was full of dignitaries -- a congressman or two, Amtrak big-wigs. Franklin pulled the train out of the station and then, opened it up. He was busy operating the train and didn't really notice the speed. Until he glanced down at the speedometer.

One-hundred and sixty-two miles an hour.

The top speed of the regular Amtrak engines was 135 mph.

It was pretty cool, he said. The train was able to take curves at 120 mph. On straight-aways, it practically flew.

Amtrak didn't order the high-speed train, at the time. Just now, the service is testing a new high-speed Acela that can do 165 mph. "I did 162 twenty years ago," Franklin said.

He thinks about it and wonders whether the country dropped the ball of high-speed rail. Japan has trains that do more than 200 mph and is working on one that will top 300 mph. Europe has high-speed rail service.

"Twenty years ago, I went 162 mph in a train," Franklin said. "If we kept at it, you have wonder where we'd be now."

Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.ydr.com/mike. Or follow him on Twitter at FnMikeArgento..

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